Another local house exploded

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jeffrefrig

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Over in Crescent Twp., in the NW area of Allegheny County, PA, (Pittsburgh), another house exploded, (yesterday) killing the older couple that owned the house. The last one over in Plum Boro is still under investigation. I really wouldn't speculate, but it seems Natural or LP gas COULD have been the cause. This house had used LP for heating, or whatever, and a gas well is on the property. I hope the Fire Marshall can get to the causes of the different explosions, perhaps helping to prevent another or get more cautionary info out to people.
Save their souls...
 
The other night, my upstairs smoke/CO detector went off in the middle of the night. I got up and looked for an hour and found nothing.
I had just put new detectors last year, each with 10 year life batteries, so I believe the batteries are still good.
The only thing I can think of is that I had to remove part of my kitchen due to a water leak and the walls are still open, maybe something from there is off-gassing.
I sleep with my doors closed at night so I bought another small wall plug version, belt and suspenders, but I cand bring this one when I stay at a hotel.
 
I had never heard of a gas well until I saw this on the news. Excuse my ignorance but what the heck is a gas well?
 
fiasconva said:
I had never heard of a gas well until I saw this on the news. Excuse my ignorance but what the heck is a gas well?
Click to expand...

I don’t know how they work but a company will drill down into an underground natural gas supply and they pay the property owner X amount of money per month to lease the property there to collect the gas with their equipment.I’m not sure but I think it’s piped to the company’s piping system. (I guess it would have to be.) My friend’s cousin collects a lot of money per month to let them do it on her property up in Butler County, North of Pittsburgh. They get paid according to the amount of btu output. How “good” the gas is. Now, I believe South of PGH the gas is better and they get more money. This is how the quick explanation was told to me. Supposedly landowners don’t have mineral rights but the well owners pay them to have a setup on their property. It’s easy money for the landowner.
Someone else can please correct me on this, but I believe this would be the Cliff Notes version. There are supposedly many of these “wells” around, probably from all the coal seams down below. I’m pretty sure it’s pretty good money for farmers/property owners. I’m sure someone knows more about this.
Edit to add: my wife will tell you I should be getting paid.
 
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Years ago there was a snowstorm predicted. We picked up some groceries at the store for them and took them to my wife’s grandparents house. When we walked in the smell of natural gas about knocked us over. I told my wife to open all the doors and windows but not to touch and electric switches. After a while the smell went away. Pap had made coffee but hadn’t turned the stove off completely. The gas slowly filled the house, but her grandparents never noticed. People’s sense of smell decreases as we age. We found a company that sold a natural gas detector like a CO detector. It was there until we sold the house.
 
jeffrefrig said:
I don’t know how they work but a company will drill down into an underground natural gas supply and they pay the property owner X amount of money per month to lease the property there to collect the gas with their equipment.I’m not sure but I think it’s piped to the company’s piping system. (I guess it would have to be.) My friend’s cousin collects a lot of money per month to let them do it on her property up in Butler County, North of Pittsburgh. They get paid according to the amount of btu output. How “good” the gas is. Now, I believe South of PGH the gas is better and they get more money. This is how the quick explanation was told to me. Supposedly landowners don’t have mineral rights but the well owners pay them to have a setup on their property. It’s easy money for the landowner.
Someone else can please correct me on this, but I believe this would be the Cliff Notes version. There are supposedly many of these “wells” around, probably from all the coal seams down below. I’m pretty sure it’s pretty good money for farmers/property owners. I’m sure someone knows more about this.
Click to expand...

You have explained this quite well. I used to come across natural gas and oil leases all the time when I was doing title abstracting in PA. The usual terms gave the owner of the mineral rights a royalty of a 1/8th share of whatever was extracted. If there was a severance (separate ownership) between the mineral rights and the surface rights, the driller would have to acquire an easement across the land of the surface rights owner in order to get in and out. The leases would run for a term of years "and for so long as oil and gas were found in paying quantities." Since there was no way to know whether gas or oil was still being extracted, I had to take exception to any gas and oil lease I found in the land records unless there was a corresponding release of the lease recorded in the land records.
 
CalifEd said:
The other night, my upstairs smoke/CO detector went off in the middle of the night. I got up and looked for an hour and found nothing.
I had just put new detectors last year, each with 10 year life batteries, so I believe the batteries are still good.
The only thing I can think of is that I had to remove part of my kitchen due to a water leak and the walls are still open, maybe something from there is off-gassing.
I sleep with my doors closed at night so I bought another small wall plug version, belt and suspenders, but I cand bring this one when I stay at a hotel.
Click to expand...
Call your local fire dept. they’ll come out with a sniffer and look for the source. Mine were happy to do it
 
CalifEd said:
The other night, my upstairs smoke/CO detector went off in the middle of the night. I got up and looked for an hour and found nothing.
I had just put new detectors last year, each with 10 year life batteries, so I believe the batteries are still good.
The only thing I can think of is that I had to remove part of my kitchen due to a water leak and the walls are still open, maybe something from there is off-gassing.
I sleep with my doors closed at night so I bought another small wall plug version, belt and suspenders, but I cand bring this one when I stay at a hotel.
Click to expand...

The one time our CO detector went off, I discovered that the vent pipe in the attic for our water heater had separated slightly. I had it repaired, and the problem went away. It was a long way from the detector, but those CO detectors are very sensitive! If you still haven't found the source, your local fire department should be able to track it down.
 
Local to me in Versailles Pa. it was quite common to have a gas well in the yard. I’ve seen old photos of homes along Lemon’s Hill and it seems like every one had a well. Every once in a while there’d be a story in the local paper(when we had one) about a natural gas leak
 
fiasconva said:
I had never heard of a gas well until I saw this on the news. Excuse my ignorance but what the heck is a gas well?
Click to expand...

The ones I’m familiar with a company drilled an oil well-natural gas from these is/was considered a “waste” product and used to be burned off in a flame at the well site. In the cases I know of this had been tapped and ran to a local property owners residence to give them “free” gas.
 
The gas company shut my Mom’s gas off about 2 weeks ago, and really tore up her front yard. Last week the said they found another leak in the main and tore it up again, but worse. Yesterday my sisters went to her house to get some things for her while she is in the hospital and about got floored from natural gas inside the house. The gas company did a pressure test on the house and red tagged it. The plumber is working on it as I type.
A good thing she is hospitalized. Her sense of smell is gone since she had Covid. Could have been a KABOOM!
 
I once was witness to a huge gas explosion on the Ohio State campus. A building under construction, but nearly finished, was destroyed as the result of a gas leak. Fortunately no one was inside when it happened. I was looking in that direction from a window of a building across the street. The window I was looking from was sucked outward. It looked like the entire building, which was fairly large, was lifted straight up about five feet, then it just fell back and collapsed into a heap of rubble. Totally destroyed. I was not hurt, just shaken up. I can still see it happening in my mind's eye. I think the building was supposed to have been a new dormitory cafeteria called Royster Commons.
 
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Had 2 experiences with natural gas explosions. 4 miles away, a nutcase nurse and her scammer boyfriend and his brother, removed the regulator on the gas line and opened the valves on the fireplace and furnace. They put a propane tank in a microwave and set it to start while they were overnighting at a casino a 100 miles away.

The complete neighborhood was a war zone, about 20 houses were condemned and the next door neighbors burned to death as firefighters were trying to clear the debris to save them.

I live 4 miles from the blast and my house shook and the roof lifted off the framing and had to be repaired.

The 2nd instance was my elderly cousin's house where the gas utility tried to slip a plastic pipe inside the existing iron pipe gas line. They pinched or scuffed it and gas escaped around the plastic pipe into the basement of my cousin's home.

A gas company employee, my cousin and her best friend were in the basement showing the gas co guy where the line was and the smell of natural gas was strong. Something happened, the house exploded and my cousin and her best friend were killed. The gas co guy suffered massive burns but survived.

Gas scares me
 
Shibadog said:
Natural gas from a well isn’t treated with methyl mercaptan, so it does not have the”odor” associated with “gas”. Way back when i was a firefighter we had a few houses that “blew up” when a basement filled with gas and it finally reached a pilot light.
Click to expand...

Depending on location and ownership a single home tap or well can and should be equipped with an odorant system. Ours were a wick in the pipeline with a gallon reservoir that was filled annually.
 
The building containing the office of the motel we regularly stay in Amish country in PA was completely destroyed by a gas explosion several months ago killing an employee. Luckily they were on a maintenance shutdown and no guests were there. Damaged the restaurant building next door which reopened but then had a fire blamed on another gas leak caused by the first explosion.

Owner confirms 1 killed in Bird-in-Hand Family Inn explosion [update] | Local News | lancasteronline.com

Fire damages Bird-in-Hand Family Restaurant weeks after another fire damaged inn at property [update] | Local News | lancasteronline.com

We switched to gas from oil 6 years ago and immediately put in multiple carbon monoxide detectors.
 
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About those small gas wells......once upon a time it wasn't all that uncommon for property owners in rural areas to get free NG right from the well instead of lease/royalty payments.

The well on a buddy's property had a moisture separator by the well to remove liquids from the gas enroute to a collection line-and his house.
 
Back when I lived in southern Ohio, many rural residents had their own gas wells. That area had lots of relatively shallow underground sandstone gas deposits. One of our family friends had a small farm and heated his home and several outbuildings with gas from his own well, had been doing it for many years. I remember he had a steel drum to catch condensate. I haven't thought about that for a very long time.

Most don't think of Ohio as being a major energy producer, but there is actually a significant amount of oil and gas production from the eastern half of the state. Ohio is actually self-sufficient in gas production.
 
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Years ago walking the woods deer hunting I heard a loud whooshing sound. I followed it to about a 3-4” pipeline lying on the surface with a hole rotted through it, leaking gas. I mentioned it to a local that said it’s been leaking for years.
 
Thanks for the info. I guess it's not common around here because the water table is so low and any drilling would get you water.
 
Several years ago when was a Law Enforcement Investigator I was interviewing an arsonist we had arrested. The perp had been in the business for a long time and had several different methods for destroying homes and businesses. Most were insurance scams. One of his favorite methods was if the house or building had gas heat he would light a candle at one end of the building and turn on the gas at the other end. By the time the gas built up enough to reach the candle there would be a nice KABOOM! Most of the time the arson investigators would miss the cause of the fire and/or explosion.
 
mtgianni said:
There are or used to be parts of Eastern MT that it was a good idea to vent ever water well to prevent a gas build up.
Click to expand...

My one brother lives near Ashland and his water has some gas in it. Not much, but it taste better if you let it sit in an open container for a while
 
Here’s a pic of Versailles Pa. From the 20s.
Like I said above, every once in a while one of these old capped wells will spring a leak.
It causes some excitement.
 

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DWalt said:
Back when I lived in southern Ohio, many rural residents had their own gas wells. That area had lots of relatively shallow underground sandstone gas deposits. One of our family friends had a small farm and heated his home and several outbuildings with gas from his own well, had been doing it for many years. I remember he had a steel drum to catch condensate. I haven't thought about that for a very long time.

Most don't think of Ohio as being a major energy producer, but there is actually a significant amount of oil and gas production from the eastern half of the state. Ohio is actually self-sufficient in gas production.
Click to expand...

Back in the 80's and 90's when we road enduros in district 11 of southern Ohio we encountered many miles of orange gas line that was just partially buried or sections that for some reason were above ground. If you hit those plastic lines at the wrong angle your front tire would wash out and down you went.

Some folks I knew who owned property down there would have lines run from the wells. Even after the wells were no longer profitable there was usually enough gas left for the home to have effectively an endless supply of natural gas. It is my understanding that once the well was abandoned by the gas company the owner was responsible for capping the well at whatever point it ran dry.
 
fiasconva said:
I had never heard of a gas well until I saw this on the news. Excuse my ignorance but what the heck is a gas well?
Click to expand...

These were all over the area I used to live in Tennessee. Many times, they were there from prior gas explorations and then the price went too low, and the well was simply capped off.

I knew a guy that heated his house and shop from his gas well. It seems like the pressure came out way too high from the casing, so he had a pressure reducer installed. They used to be considered a good sale item if you house went on the market with one on your property.
 
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Back in the day, a Buddy of mine up in N Louisiana had an afterschool job of logging some Gas Wells.
It was a small group of wells which were owned by a Texas Co.
He got the job with his Dads help.
The condensate which is a liquid is separated from the Gas at the well.
Natural Gas is compressed shortly after it leaves the well and liquid don’t compress!
So Curt would pour the condensate into his Ford.
He said it was hard to start but ran ok.
Usually he added some gasoline.
Kind of sounds like the E85 discussion!
 
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